The Democratic board member has alleged open-meetings violations by the Republicans, who recently took several actions that could lessen the electoral influence of students at Appalachian State University: reducing the number of early polling places, combining three precincts into one that will be the state's fifth largest, and changing the location of another polling place, Jesse Wood reports for the High Country Press in Boone, the county's largest city. (Photo by Wood: The meeting got so crowded it had to be moved to a larger room)
The crowd at the meeting reacted with "a roomful of boos and jeers and ended with a chant of 'shame on you,'” Wood writes. Democratic member Kathleen Campbell threatened legal action multiple times during the heated meeting, saying Eggers and Aceto signed the special-meeting notice on a Thursday, but she and Elections Director Jane Ann Hodges hadn’t received the information packet for the meeting until minutes before Monday’s meeting, after the Republican members had first refused to let her have it. (Read more)
The Watauga Democrat, which despite its name is not a partisan newspaper, said in an editorial, "What is difficult to understand are the depth and breadth of some of the rapid-fire alterations of board policy that were imposed." The paper invited the board to come to its office "for a roundtable discussion. . . . We would like to believe that our county board of elections, at all times and in all political climates, exists for a singular nonpartisan purpose -- to promote full and fair elections within the confines of our county. That is the ideal to which we must aspire, and it's time to talk honestly about how we will get there." (Read more)
No comments:
Post a Comment